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View Full Version : New trip report + pictures (12/4-5)



potterphreak
12-06-2005, 03:59 PM
Cast of Characters:
Me (CJ) age 27-gi-normous Disneyland fan
Nicole (my brand new SIL and very good friend) age 26-been to Disneyland once
Jylian (my daughter) age 2-very first trip
Katie (Nicole’s daughter) age 2-very first trip

Pre-Trip Planning:
Nicole was only able to stay one night due to work and we were originally booked at the Holiday Inn At The Park for $87.75 for 2 queen beds, after taxes. After staying at the DL Hotel with my family 11/27-11/30 I got kind of whiny about staying off property so I was “farting” around online at the Disneyland website and found where we could get a room for $148 after taxes. I had drawn Nicole’s name for our annual Christmas drawing and decided the extra $50 for the hotel would be my gift for her.

Day One: Sunday, 12/4/2005
We were on the road at 8:45am after stopping for McGriddles at the nearest Mickey D’s. We made very good time and stopped in Bakersfield for some caffeine at Starbucks and potty breaks all around. We arrived at the Disneyland Hotel at 1:30pm, Nicole still in the dark why we were there. I told her I wanted her to look around the hotel as she has always wanted to stay there. We drive right up to the front of the hotel and as I place the car in park I ask her, Don’t you wish we could stay here? And she says, oh yeah, but for $300 a night, no thanks. And I said, hmm too bad because we have a reservation, Merry Christmas!! She got all teary-eyed and excited and we went inside. The lobby was jammed with people and luggage, so I got in the check-in line and she went to a chair with the girls. Halfway through the line, I asked her to come to me for a second as I had left my money in the car and I didn’t want valet to move the car before I could get it. She said she would see if they had moved the car and if not, get my money. Somehow, Katie was behind her during this and she didn’t know and there wasn’t a lot of room and there was this extremely graceful yet oh-so-painful fall where she tried to avoid landing on Katie and instead landed on her thumb. All of her weight, on her thumb. She kind of laughed it off and went to see about the car. When she came back, she couldn’t move her hand, her fingers were starting to hurt and the thumb was swelling rapidly. Oh my! We checked in, she called down to Medical Services, they called back and said she would have to go to the ER and off she went. About an hour after she left, I received a call from the front desk and a very nice gentleman named Josh said he had extended our check out to 1pm for the next day and if that wasn’t enough time to just call down and they would extend it for however long we needed. Very nice!! 30 minutes after THAT, there was a knock on the door from room service. I promptly informed the nice gentleman that I had not ordered anything and he says, Oh no, this is for the kids and left. So I look at what he brought; 2 very large Mickey Mouse cookies, a bucket with ice and milk in it and a note. The note said “Nicole, We hope you are feeling better From the Disneyland Hotel.” Very sweet!! I took the girls down to the Cove pools which I fell in love with!! Neverland Pool is very nice, but for 2 two year olds it just wouldn’t have worked. I put their teeny tiny life jackets on them (yep, the hotel provides different sizes!) and we got in. The water was a lot warmer than the Neverland Pool and very shallow. The depth markers listed it as 2 feet to 5 feet, but the 2 feet deep came up to the girls’ chests and the 5 feet came up to my chest (I am only 5’5”) so I think the water was low, LOL. We spent about an hour and a half to two hours here, the girls had a really great time. After we got out, we stopped at Croc’s Bits and Bites for some dinner. I ordered the BBQ chicken sandwich which came with fries and got the girls a chicken strip meal which came with 3 strips, fries and a drink (for me, no soda for these two!) Total after tax was $15.38, not bad for such concenience! We got up to the room and out of our swimsuits, dried off, etc. and ate. The girls seemed to like their food, I must admit I thought mine was really nasty. The fries were decent with ketchup, but the chicken sandwich was just pitiful. The BBQ sauce comes on the side, which I thought was odd, LOL. Katie fell asleep while eating (I had to pry half of a strip out of her hand!) and Jyl watched cartoons. Eventually she came over and started munching one of the hotel cookies, which she found super tasty and I thought were pretty nasty. They were very hard, dunking them in milk didn’t make them soft or soggy and the chocolate didn’t taste like anything. They were very nice to look at though and such a nice thought! Nicole got back to the hotel around 7pm, after spending a little over 4 hours at the ER, they had to take several X-rays and she needs to see an orthopedic surgeon as soon as she gets home because there is a good chance she will need surgery. Always Ms. Suzy Sunshine, she suggested we go to the park and make the most of it. We walked through Downtown Disney and she stopped at Tortilla Jo’s Taqueria and ordered a sprite and Carne Asada burrito for $10.99. She rated the burrito 3 stars out of 5, not bad! We got her ticket (AP Bring-A-Friend 2 day parkhopper, $86) and headed into DCA, which we thought we could do everything there that we wanted so we wouldn’t have to hop on Monday. When we got in DCA, we found out they closed in 20 minutes and Turtle Talk was already closed, the girls couldn’t go on Soarin’ so we said OOPS and headed to Disneyland. The line for Disneyland was a little long but moved fairly quickly. After renting a stroller for Katie, we were hoping to take the train but the Candlelight Processional display was still up and appeared to be blocking the entrance, so we walked to Tomorrowland. Our first ride was Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and the girls LOVED it! Jyl is a HUGE Toy Story 1 & 2 fan and Katie has never really seen the movies so I was wondering how that would go, but the girls never seemed scared and played like champs. We broke down about 1 minute after the ride started and I kept zinging the bejeebers out of some target that gave 1,000 points per hit. The ride started back up after 2 or 3 minutes (hee hee, helped me get my all time high score of over 135,000!) and we hurried off to see our pictures. Mine and Jyl’s came out cute, I quickly emailed it to myself (Jyl got 200 points then decided to just watch the rest of the ride) but Nic and Katie’s picture had difficulties. Bummer! We stopped in Store Command because Jyl wanted a Buzz Lightyear basketball that her sister had bought 5 days before when we brought her and had it sent to our room for pickup from Bell Services the next morning ($16.61 for a mini basketball-go figure, these kids!) The fireworks had been cancelled after we got off and the line went from walk-on (which we did! I love how fast this ride seems to load and unload!) to absurdly long! We headed to Fantasyland so Nicole could see the lights, one of the main reasons for a trip during December. We rode It’s A Small World Holiday and we all loved it, especially Nic and the girls (their first times). Then we boarded the Monorail for our super speedy trip back to Downtown Disney, went to the Hotel and fell asleep. Jyl woke me and Nic up with her coughing at 4am, so I drugged her nicely and we fell back asleep. Poor Nicole, her hand was hurting her so badly she didn’t get back to sleep until 6:30 and then we got our wake up call at 7. (Nicole was offered a prescription for Vicadin at the hospital but she refused, saying she had a 2 year old to take care of and she couldn’t be all loopy-what a great mom!)
Day Two: Monday, 12/5/05
Monday we got a semi late start (we definitely didn’t take advantage of Early Entry!) and arrived at the park a little after 9am. We got in, rented a stroller for Katie again (note: We have decided we will NEVER travel together again without bringing the twin stroller in case one of us gets injured. It was so hard for poor Nicole to maneuver Katie around all the people but again, she was such a trooper!) We walked to Fantasyland where the castle walkway was closed because they were doing some filming for Walt Disney World (or so the sign said) so we entered off the side and came right up on the Alice in Wonderland ride. We decided, what the hey! and took the girls on. They did very well, even though the family in front of us had a hysterical 2 or 3 year old, I thought for sure they would catch her fear but nope. The ride was great and cute, with about a 10 minute wait. We got off and went on the Tea Cups; we even got the Gold Teacup, yay! A very nice Cast Member took our photo and our ride began. Afterwards we headed to Dumbo where there was about a 15 minute wait. Jylian was very excited as she likes the movie Dumbo very much. She couldn’t make up her mind what color she wanted to ride, kept going back between orange and blue, we ended up on blue by default (oranges were taken). After Dumbo I decided I wanted us all to go on Peter Pan as Jyl likes that movie VERY much (loooooves Jing-A-Bell, as she calls her!) so we got in the line. The line was very long or maybe it just seemed that way because after about 10 minutes, Katie got very upset. Both girls wanted to be held and there was no way Nicole could hold Katie with her one arm without constantly having to put her down to rest it, so whenever Katie was on the ground, she got super upset and let everyone know about it. Jylian developed a little bit of an attitude and started mouthing off (the fruits of having an older sister-Haha!). I thought we kept our cool pretty well until Katie started pushing Nicole because she was so mad, so I intervened. I grabbed Katie away from Nicole and put her next to Jyl and we had a little talk, the 3 of us. Didn’t really do much, so I held Katie for a while and got her calmed down a little bit. (Note: It’s none of my business if Katie pushes Nicole, my concern was it looked like she was pushing her very hard and I was terrified she was going to knock her down. Figured all we needed was another hospital trip! After talking with Nicole, I found out she wasn’t pushing very hard at all-if I had stopped and thought about it, I would have (might have!) realized that a 2 year old probably wouldn’t be able to push an adult over! Silly CJ!) After the long line and all the drama, Katie and Jyl got a little scared when it came time to board our ships but we pushed ahead with them. As soon as the bars came down, Jylian was calm (kept asking where her seat belt was though, haha!) and enjoyed the ride. I don’t know how Katie did, but I am assuming she did great as well since I couldn’t hear her on the ride and the one time I was able to see them Nicole was pointing stuff out to her and she seemed happy. After all of the line drama, we decided to leave Fantasyland as we didn’t think there was much else for the girls to do or see there. We stopped off at the restrooms near the Fantasyland Theatre, where we all used the facilities and then headed on to Frontierland, hoping against hope that Jyl would see Woody. When we got there, there was Jesse!!! Jyl was super excited and we went and got in line. Being 2 and standing on the ground, Jesse looks very tall and imposing so when it was our turn, Jyl was a little nervous and scared. I picked her up and we talked to Jesse for a moment and I told her that this was Jyl’s very first character interaction and I must say, Jesse was AMAZING!! She held out her hand so Jyl could “pet” it and then she touched Jyl’s face and next thing I knew, Jyl was on the ground with Jesse crouched down with her and they were hugging and whatnot. Jyl’s visit ended with a kiss on Jesse’s cheek. Katie said hi to Jesse from her stroller (no fear from this kid!). After that we decided to head over to DCA where we were hoping to eat at the Princess Character meal at Ariel’s Grotto so that Katie could meet Cinderella but when we got there they were not accepting walk-ins. Sad! None of us had really eaten yet (we did give the girls trail mix and raisins and juice, so I doubt they were as hungry as the adults!) so we stopped at the first food type place we saw which turned out to be Strips ‘N Dips. Nicole ordered a 3 pc. Fish which came with fries, a coke, and then got the girls a chicken strips meal and her total was somewhere around $18. I ordered a coke, a 3 pc. Fish strips which also came with fries, paid extra to get tartar AND bbq sauce and a cookie, and my total was $14.40. Our fish was very good and the fries were tasty with the bbq sauce, which we both enjoyed. The girls were not very interested in eating; instead they were very excited about the little birds that were begging for food. Jyl kept insisting they were going to sit on her finger and she threw them some bits of French fries. We decided to “bribe” them to eat their chicken, said if they each at 1 strip, they could feed the birds. A very nice janitor gave us each a mini candy cane as well. Gotta love the Cast Members!! After they ate, they fed the birds and danced a little, they really enjoyed this area. We walked over to Turtle Talk and sat through the show, which was amazing as usual! Both the girls are huge Nemo fans so they really enjoyed this. I had Katie on my lap and Crush talked to me! He asked my name and I told him CJ and he asked how I spell it, too funny!! Katie wouldn’t talk to him though, too shy. That’s an awful lot to ask of a 2 year old! Another child asked Crush about Dory and unlike the show I had seen a few days earlier with my 6 year old, Dory came swimming out! She taught us all how to speak whale and oops! We ended up calling a whale to us, who squished Dory up against the glass. Good times! After the Crush show we had a few minutes to kill before the next Playhouse Disney show so we sat and rested for a bit. We went into Playhouse Disney Live which I thought the girls would enjoy more but at least they seemed halfway entertained. We went back to Disneyland after the show and got on the train and headed to Toon Town. The train was kind of bummer because we had fold up the strollers, which we totally understand why, was just hard to maneuver two 2 year olds, all the stuff that was in the strollers plus the 2 strollers with only 3 arms. Oh well, it rested our feet and got us to Toon Town faster than we could have walked (at least, I think it’s faster!). Toon Town was pretty busy so we basically got in, saw Mickey (again, the girls did AWESOME!!! No fear from these two!) and got out. We walked back to Frontierland hoping to see Woody but then found out he didn’t come out after 3:30pm. Bummer! Nicole really wanted Katie to see Cinderella but no go. We headed over to the hub to get seats, got really good seats! I went to get us popcorn and hot chocolate but because no one but the restaurants was selling hot chocolate at the moment, I settled for 2 Pluto tubs of popcorn-$10. Right before the parade ended, our whole section was told we would have to move to the opposite side because they were moving the filming crew to where we were. The Cast Members were VERY nice and helpful, held back everyone else while we got to our new spots (equally nice as the previous spot). We waited about an hour (not easy with 2 year olds, but not as difficult as anticipated!) for the fireworks and there was a message over the loud speaker saying that because of filming, Tinkerbell would be making a special once-in-a-lifetime trip around the Castle (different than her normal “journey”) but she never showed. Second time that lady has left me high and dry, hahaha! Fireworks started and everyone remained standing <sigh> so I had to stand as well, all the time holding Jyl. Now, Jyl is not very heavy but after 15 minutes, all I have to say is OUCH!!! Katie and Jyl seemed to enjoy the fireworks a little (didn’t cry out of fear but definitely not riveted to the show). After the fireworks, it was time to leave the park (early closure at 6pm) and it was a madhouse!!! I told Nicole if we got separated, to meet at the C in front of DCA. It took an hour for me and Jyl to make it from the hub to the letter C and another 10 minutes for Nicole and Katie to catch up. We had completely forgotten that Nicole would have to turn the stroller in, which was a huge bummer because Katie had fallen asleep in it after the fireworks. Poor Nicole, broken hand and a super grumpy/sleepy two year old to manage without a stroller was definitely not good. Nicole was very upset and we decided to leave ASAP. It took another 30-45 minutes to maneuver through Downtown Disney back to the hotel to pick up my van and then another 20 to deal with housekeeping over a pillow I had forgotten to give to the bellman that morning. D’oh! A new pillow and I had just gotten in broke in! Oh well, you live and learn. They were taking a really long time having been nice enough to actually go up to the room to look for it and I felt I couldn’t leave Nicole waiting outside anymore so I bailed before they came back. We got the heck out of Anaheim very disgruntled (large crowds and no stroller for Nic). We stopped at a Taco Bell and an In N Out somewhere between L.A. and the Grapevine. I drove us down the Grapevine then we took turns driving as we were both so sleepy we could hardly keep our eyes open. I took over about 30 miles from Fresno and let Nicole sleep as she had to go to work the next day and we arrived at her house a little after 1am. What a trip!

Tips/Hints: Check the DL Hotel rates (online-when I called for an AP rate I was given a “discount” rate of $311 and online I got $148) a few days before you leave. I booked our room 4 days before we left (make sure you are already booked somewhere else, just in case!)

http://photos.yahoo.com/cjrox1978

potterphreak
12-07-2005, 07:52 AM
Hmmm

hlbtimes2
12-07-2005, 11:33 AM
Sounds like you had a good trip despite all the ups and downs!

Wesley815
12-07-2005, 05:54 PM
Ummm... of course it's going to be insane since you were leaving at the exact same moment EVERYONE else was to. Other guests also wanted to watch the fireworks, so there's not much Disney could do in a sitiuation like that. Park closing times are posted FAR in advace prior to your trip so the whole 6pm closing is known.

...as far as the stroller goes, well sorry if this sounds mean, but what the heck did you guys expect!? You got the stroller FROM the park, you have to give it BACK to the park. That's just what you gotta deal with for not bringing your own. Disney is doing you a favor even offering strollers in the first place.
We got the heck out of Anaheim very disgruntled (large crowds and no stroller for Nic)Well, maybe now you understand that A LOT of people go to Disneyland so crowds are what you have to deal with. ...And hopefully you understand that renting a stroller does not mean you bought it, eventually you're going to have to give it back and take the sleeping child out.

This is one of the strangest trip reports I've read in a while.

Crazy4DL
12-07-2005, 06:31 PM
.

...as far as the stroller goes, .

I didn't get the impression she was saying it was Disneyland's fault. It didn't sound like she was complaining rather just telling how her trip went.

Sounds like a couple of crazy of days there, potterphreak. Glad you all survived without too much damage. :p ;)

Thanks for spending your time to give us a report.

potterphreak
12-07-2005, 07:09 PM
Thanks Crazy! Gotta love those judgmental peeps-they sure make you appreciate the niceys on here even more! LOL
Since Nicole broke her hand IN the DLH, it would have been nice if we could have returned the stroller to the hotel or something other than what happened, but it is what it is. And I understand that the closing times were listed and everyone else wanted to see the fireworks as well, I would have just expected a company like Disneyland to anticipate the drama (made more crazy by all the people in Downtown Disney trying to get IN to the park!) and have better evacuation. But that's just me. Was a fun trip, Monday night was crazy tho! LOL

GrumpyUTboi
12-07-2005, 07:17 PM
Actually Wesley, the strollers from the park are pretty dang good. We rent 2 strollers each day for 6 days while we are there. It sure in the heck beats getting a stroller stolen like what happened to us. You are right, if you do not bring your own stroller then it is a pain to walk back to the hotel, but hey it was more of a pain getting our stroller stolen at DL.

Arnie
12-08-2005, 09:36 AM
It may not be the nicest thing for CM's or crowds depending on where you leave it, but you can always just ditch the stroller somewhere too since the park will pick it up later and you don't have a return deposit on it. It probably was not a good option in your SIL case broken hand and all.

potterphreak
12-08-2005, 12:11 PM
Arnie, I agree. Really, the only thing that WOULD have been a better idea is if we had brought our twin stroller. There is no way we could have went and bought one just for this trip while we were there tho, as it was very low budget and those things are super pricey! Live and learn! Poor Nicole, her very first trip to Disneyland in 2001 she was pregnant (me too!) and passed a kidney stone and had to go to the hospital. Her second trip, she falls down minutes after getting super news (staying at the DL Hotel!) and breaks her hand. Poor kid!!!